Once again I have to agree with Terry's diatribe against today's
computers. he was speaking of Apple, but why restrict it to them?
Interaction has gotten worse over the years. A good deal of this is
simply because the number of features has increased, and this always
leads to a degradation of experience.
A secondary reason is that Apple no longer focusses upon this.
A tertiary reason is the disastrous way in which gestural control has
been implemented on iPhone, iPad, and Android.
People have completely lost track of fundamental design principles.
Both Apple and Google are guilty of ignoring the User Experience
design community. Android is slightly superior to Apple because they
allow menus, which gives more information, but Android phones are just
as capricious, arbitrary, and lacking feedback and discoverability as
are Apple ones. The notion that much of the critical knowledge we
need should be "knowledge in the world," to recoin a phrase, has
escaped them.
I put my hopes on Microsoft. They have the very best design staff and
they listen to their designers. Windows 8 (and Windows Phone 8) look
like great improvements. But it is too early to tell: they have not
been released publicly yet.
See my articles:
Natural User Interfaces Are Not Natural
http://jnd.org/dn.mss/natural_user_interfaces_are_not_natural.html
Gestural Interfaces: A Step Backwards In Usability
http://jnd.org/dn.mss/gestural_interfaces_a_step_backwards_in_usability_6.html
Gesture Wars
http://jnd.org/dn.mss/gesture_wars.html
Don
|